Don't have an account?

Favorite Schools

Favorite Teams

House GOP considers options on possible government shutdown

govtshutdown.jpg

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nev., and other lawmakers meet with new mothers and their babies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, Sept. 25, 2013, to criticize Republican efforts to kill the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as "Obamacare." Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., said Democrats would defend President Obama's health care law, adding, she would not return to a time when insurance companies denied benefits to women because being a pregnant was considered a preexisting condition. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)
(AP)

WASHINGTON (AP) — Speaker John Boehner said Thursday the GOP-controlled House will not accept a temporary spending bill from the Democratic Senate if it is shorn clean of a tea party plan to "defund Obamacare."

"I don't see that happening," Boehner told reporters.

At the same time, the Ohio Republican said House GOP leaders would unveil legislation to lift the government's borrowing cap, but only if the new health care law is delayed for a year. He defended that measure's relatively modest spending cuts even as some rank-and-file conservatives pressed for more.

"It does not cut spending significantly. It does not fix the problem," Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Ala., said of the debt ceiling package. He said he was undecided about whether to support it. "We need to significantly cut federal government spending, or long-term have a balanced budget constitutional amendment," he said.

Pressure is building on fractious House Republicans as a partial government shutdown looms at midnight Monday if a bitterly-divided Congress can't send a temporary spending bill to President Barack Obama on time.

Meanwhile, the Senate trudged ahead toward a Friday vote on stripping the defund Obamacare provision from the House-passed stopgap funding bill. Boehner's remarks mean the House will return the stopgap measure to the Senate over the weekend, but he declined to describe what measures Republicans might add to it.

A partial government shutdown would keep hundreds of thousands of federal workers off the job, close national parks and generate damaging headlines for whichever side the public holds responsible.

The timeline is daunting since delays in the Senate — where tea party favorite Ted Cruz, R-Texas, promises to filibuster any bill that doesn't block Obamacare — could mean the first partial shutdown since the 1995-96 government closures that bruised Republicans and strengthened the hand of Democratic President Bill Clinton.

A 21-hour talkathon by Ted Cruz whipped up the GOP's tea party wing even as it complicated efforts by House GOP leaders to assemble rank-and-file support for a temporary spending measure.

Cruz wants to derail the spending bill to deny Democrats the ability to strip out the anti-Obamacare provision, a strategy that has put him at odds with other Republicans who say the move won't work and fear it would spark a shutdown.

Many GOP senators, including the Senate's top two Republicans, have said they'll vote to advance the measure rather than filibuster it to death, a vote that promises to give Democrats controlling the chamber a procedural edge in a subsequent vote to kill the tea party's effort to use the must-pass bill to derail Obamacare.

Wednesday evening, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., unveiled his version of the stopgap spending bill, which would keep the government running through Nov. 15. He set in motion a key vote on Friday that promises to expose the divide between Cruz and more pragmatic Republicans. Senate passage of the spending bill — stripped of the Obamacare provision — was expected no later than Saturday.

"Any senator who votes with Majority Leader Harry Reid and the Democrats ... has made the decision to allow Obamacare to be funded," Cruz told reporters after his marathon speech ended Wednesday at noon. Cruz himself has predicted that is exactly what the Senate will do, and he's already called on House Republicans to reject the bill when it comes back to them.

The simplest thing for Republicans to do would be to accept the Senate bill and send it to the White House for Obama's signature, a prospect that's unappealing to Republicans because it would make them look like they're surrendering. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, originally preferred a plan to deliver to Obama a stopgap funding bill without the Obamacare provisions.

Now, GOP leaders are exploring adding face-saving options — like the repeal of a tax on medical devices, which many Democrats also oppose — to the stopgap spending bill. There's also sentiment to take away the health insurance subsidy awarded lawmakers now that they'll be required to purchase health care on Obamacare exchanges.

The House is expected to approve a measure this week allowing the Treasury to borrow freely for another year, although that legislation, too, would include a provision to carry out the Republican campaign against Obamacare. While no final decisions have been made, party officials said a one-year delay was likely to be added, rather than the full-fledged defunding that is part of the spending bill awaiting action in the Senate.

The GOP's demands on the debt limit involves far less dramatic spending cuts than Republicans demanded from Obama in a debt showdown two years. Then, Republicans extracted $2.1 trillion in cuts over a decade for a similar increase in the borrowing cap. Now, GOP leaders are mulling a 14-month borrowing increase that would increase the debt ceiling by almost $1 trillion but are considering only modest cuts, like an increase in the contribution federal workers make to their pensions.

Shutdown-averting stopgap spending bills traditionally have been steered clear of these kinds of battles for fear of a politically damaging shutdown. But with the new health care law poised to enroll millions of people into Obamacare starting Oct. 1, there's a new urgency among opponents to pull out all the stops to try to derail it.

Health and Human Secretary Kathleen Sebelius told reporters this week that consumers will have an average of 53 plans to choose from, and her department estimated the average monthly individual premium for a benchmark policy known as the "second-lowest cost silver plan" would range from a low of $192 in Minnesota to a high of $516 in Wyoming. Tax credits will bring down the cost for many.

Republicans counter that the legislation is causing employers to defer hiring new workers, lay off existing ones and reduce the hours of others to hold down costs as they try to ease the impact of the bill's taxes and other requirements.

"Obamacare is destroying jobs," Cruz said. "It is driving up health care costs. It is killing health benefits. It is shattering the economy."